Piles of money for pilot directors

Face it, the television industry has feature-envy. Forget for a moment that television is producing BETTER dramas and in general better product than features (PHAT GIRLZ notwithstanding), TV still has the mindset that they’re a second class citizen. The latest example is this mad frenzy to hire movie directors to helm TV pilots. Big article in Wednesday’s Hollywood Reporter on it. Spike Lee, F. Gary Gray, Jon Turtletaub, Andy Tenant, Simon West, Barry Sonnenfeld, and others are happily feeding off the television trough.

Not to take anything away from these directors and not to say that I wouldn’t be thrilled to be thrown off of any set by any one of them, but really, for the heavy money they’re making, are they THAT much better than experienced television directors? If someone is capable is of turning out great episodes of LOST and THE SOPRANOS and HOUSE, isn’t he as good as the guy who gave us PHENOMENON?

In the article several of these feature directors say they were attracted to the little screen (even the expression denotes inferiority) because of the “character driven” challenging nature of these pilots. Oh get real! It’s a big fat payday for six weeks work. They can squeeze these pilots in between film projects, and if the pilots go they can receive producer credit and royalties for never having to do another thing for the series including watching it. If I were a feature director I’d jump at that. I’d lie and say I WAS a feature director to get that deal. (“I did the remake of HOWARD THE DUCK. It’s not been released here but did win the prestigious audience award at the Antarctica film festival.”)

A studio exec rationalizes this hiring practice by saying: “There’s a lot of brilliant TV directors, but sometimes the mentality of, ‘Well, it’s good enough’, can creep in with TV guys.”

Hello?

First of all, don’t hire those guys. But the exec continues:

“The really strong feature directors don’t accept that. They approach the job saying, ‘No, I’m here to make this spectacular and blow people’s minds.’”

Hello again?

Feature directors are used to huge budgets. Feature directors are used to shooting maybe two pages a day. What happens when that brilliant perfectionist is told he has to slam through six to eight pages a day and can’t have that crane and instead of Hawaii he must shoot in Oxnard? And his star is a former American Idol contestant who has a high TVQ.

In truth, it is often the TV veteran who is used to such schedules and restrictions (and semi-actors) and knows how to weave the straw into gold.

What film directors bring to the party is their names and cachet. Television gets to play with the big boys. And that’s fine. The names are impressive. But television isn’t slumming it. And television isn’t drive-by art.

It’s time that the feature industry started turning to television people. Who knows? Maybe the movies would be better.